In Aldo Leopold's \A Sand County Almanac,"" he wrote of, ""land as an energy circuit.""
""Plants absorb energy from the sun. This energy flows through a circuit called the biota, which may be represented by a pyramid consisting of layers. The bottom layer is the soil. A plant layer rests on the soil, an insect layer on the plants, a bird and rodent layer on the insects, and so on...
""Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a foundation of energy flowing through soils, plants, and animals. ... The native plants and animals kept the energy circuit open; others may or may not. ... Man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary ones, and have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen.""
I'm reading the book for Zoology 677. Each student chooses a text, and I selected Leopold's treatise on conservation, wilderness, Wisconsin prairie and marsh.
I'm taking the class with a friend who shall remain nameless, not to protect her identity, but rather because of her recent vow: ""The wind through blooming trees and the splash of spring streams, I shall hear as my name."" I think it was an Earth Day thing.
The course requires that each student volunteer 76 hours with an environmental or outdoors organization. My friend and I volunteer at Capital Springs State Park, just south of Madison.
Most of this new state park is not yet open to the public. The part that is open includes Lake Farm Park, a Dane County park complete with RV campground. When more of Cap Springs opens, Lake Farm will be absorbed into the state park system.
Our job at Cap Springs is to cut down the honeysuckle that grows on the ridge between cornfields and Lake Waubesa. Removing honeysuckle and other invasive species is an early step for prairie restoration. In a mere five years, you could park in the Cap Springs RV campground and gaze over a small, rolling plain of native grasses.
Should this fail to strike you as inspiring, consider the current view: cornfields, honeysuckle and garbage. The garbage gathers primarily along fence lines.
Sometimes, when the nature queen and I feel we've sufficiently battled the tangly enemies, we walk the edge of fields and pick up trash. For years, the three land-use groups have been farmers, ice fisherman and hunters. Beer cans and fast food wrappers are common finds. So are cracked bait buckets, empty bottles of motor oil and broken sheets of Styrofoam insulation.
For the most part, however, we cut honeysuckle. Being shrubs, they're hard to take down. Branches begin at ground level, growing to wrist thickness on the largest we encountered. Much of the work is clearing access to the central trunk, which is often split and gnarled.
I have developed a new appreciation for Wisconsin prairie and marshland. This makes it easy to feel high and mighty about prairie restoration, and easier still to curse settlers, land developers and even farmers for disrupting the ""energy circuit.""
I know, however, that I didn't give two hoots about prairie or its restoration before this semester. Leopold's book alone would not have changed this.
The patch of honeysuckle my friend and I cleared is small within the park, and the park is small within the state. I think in order for me to feel that my contribution mattered at all, it was necessary to see that it mattered very little.
